Waking Seamus Finnigan
by Mauvais Sang
Summary: He answered the call. Since that day, he became numb. He remembers the days up to the event, the battle occuring, and the darkness proceeding. Did he kill Harry Potter? Should he have answered the call? And will he wake again? FinPotPostHPB
1. Chapter 1: The Awakening

**Disclaimer: **You all know how this goes. I don't own the characters, I only fanfic 'em. Enjoy.

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Waking Seamus Finnigan  
by: Mauvais Sang  
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**Chapter 1**: _The Awakening  
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Stragglers from a gray procession diffused through the mahogany frame, unsure in their steps and more unsure in their furrowed brows, a November drizzle fogging their meandering human souls: Is it death? Burial? Climax of another torturous scene in the drama of life, living, scurrying like filthy rats in a filthy rat maze? The void plateau, or the crass resolution?

I had been sitting here for a long time. Too long. Sitting in the dank, the rotten, the self-corrosion, where the sun would never bother me. I knew exactly what it was.

Most entered stony-faced carved like Moai, that wintry draft none too ingratiatory, another sound reason for their sombering visage, followed their flapping black tails and chilled shoulders of peevish patrons. On a rare occasion, where one would slip and forget their time and place, he would drink, speak, joke, and be merry, all but a moment he allowed himself a smidgen happiness before a sepulchral realisation would pull at his spleen and silence his laughter. The sepulchral realisation. Our sepulchral realisation.

A few stray wisps of dandruffed snowflakes rode their cloaks as they filed in alone or with a fetter. Even though they arrived at inconsistent intervals, it was not difficult to discern one party from another: lassitude cracked at the edges of their brow and corners of their poached lips. More so revealing was the fact that I knew who I was cautiously sifting for, and who I was not.

The pub was bustling with noise, but the Babel of tongues were ashen and gray. I listened for some relevant trace of dialogue in my simulation. Hood over my head, I rubbed at a lone flake until it melted into the wooden table below, keeping my eyes lowered. My boots rattled the jittery table as both my heels bounced anxiously. I wanted to lose myself in the rattling, melt into the table as the snowflake did, and disappear. Not all of our wishes can be fulfilled so easily, though.

"Jack Frost's a wintry bastard, isn't he?"

No answer.

"Crack a smile at least, won't you?"

"Don't bother. He's been like that since we came in. Ever since he was lowered, actually. We found him pissed drunk. He won't get out of his bum mood. The epitome of self-pity." A female voice interjected.

"You can't blame him. It hit him pretty hard."

"It hit us all pretty hard. It's no excuse for him to be a steaming clot."

"Can you show some empathy?"

"Why? You'd like to hear me bawl my eyes out? Tear my hair out? Throw myself into a bed of flames? Did you expect me to do that for you, Michael? Things don't work that way."

There was some careful selection of words before he answered. I was taken aback as well. The table stopped jittering as myself, and some adjacent individuals who had noticed their heated voices, listened closer.

"Gin, that was low. Don't sa--"

"Don't call me _Gin_."

"Ginny. That hurt."

"Well, we're all hurting now, aren't we?"

"Gin!"

"_Ginny_."

"Ginny, please. Don't."

"There's nothing to don't."

"I don't want to talk like this."

"Like what? There's nothing to talk like."

"Like the way you're talking to me!"

"You? There's a way I have to talk to you now?"

"I didn't mean it like that!"

"Like what?"

"Nothing."

"No. Say it."

"Nothing!"

"No! I want you to say it!"

"I just thought that since we copped off you'd talk to me differently!"

The screech of the barstool legs smearing against the solid concrete floor shrilled throughout the pub, heads turning with it. The bustling of tongues ceased and now there was two people left acting on this desolate stage.

"I wasn't right that night. It was nothing."

"No it wasn't. It was something, Gin, you felt it, I felt it, we felt it together. We had something, and we still do!"

"Don't call me Gin!"

"Ginny. Please."

"I want you out of here. Now. Out of my sight. I don't want to see you, hear you, know your name, I want you gone, now."

"Gin, you don't mean that."

"Out. Now."

"Gin! Ginny!"

"I said leave!"

"Gin--"

"Leave!"

I glanced up a little, careful to not let too much of my face peek behind my mood, seeing the act for the first time. The two were standing in the middle of the stage as the rest of the pub froze in time, their mirrored profiles facing me, a hunched over man between them oblivious, one staring ruefully at the other: the redhead was firm in place, mouth slightly ajar, bottom lip thundering in fury, brows severely arched, the dark-haired boy was watching for cracks of reluctance, desperately searching, his brown eyes worried and anxious. What sign of frailty he so forlornly wished to find was left unfound and he quickly turned to leave the pub, afraid of further damage to his pride, and the redhead was left with the resounding boom of the door as the dark-haired boy slammed it, slamming anger, frustration, and his loss with it.

The pub returned to its raucous as the redhead began to sob, the confusion of tongues enveloping exponentially as she drowned in the empty noise. I lowered my face to the table again. Watching for flakes. Listening for sounds. Hoping for resolution. I would only succeed in maintaining the voyeur's game.

"Ginny, come sit down." A new female voice appeared. It was light, airy, but held the tone that mothers held when a long-awaited child comes home with alcohol on his breath and a shattered heart to mend. Whispered cooing and soft words held the dialogue as the redhead continued to weep within herself. It wasn't too long before she had something to say.

"He's an idiot. He doesn't know what he's doing. He didn't know anything. I was stupid, stupid, so stupid. I wasn't right. I didn't insinuate anything when I wanted to see him. I just needed somebody."

"Oh, Ginny, none of us were right, and you were only doing what any one of us would do."

"So did you fuck some old bloke too, Luna?"

"No, that's not what I meant, I did not copulate with anybody or thing, but I meant it's natural to be lonely, and to call for help, and to have that call answered. Natural like the way snow flakes fall from those heavy, full bellies, we call clouds. There's no right way to fall. It just is."

"It was wrong. Wrong, wrong. I shouldn't've done it."

"I don't want to hear you yelling at snow flakes anymore. Have your butterbeer and they'll just melt away. Let's talk about something else."

She mumbled something indiscriminate.

"Hm? I couldn't hear that."

"Nothing."

"Ah, well perhaps the better to start a new topic with. Where is everybody?"

"Where were you is the better question."

"I was off admiring the shapes and tastes of different snow flakes. They each do a wonderful, delightfully distinctive dance on your palate."

"I should try it sometime."

"You should, the many different tastes you can taste in a single flurry is magnificent. Now, where did everybody go?"

"Angelina and Katie have gone off to the bathroom. Fred and George had to take care of some business next door. Cho, Padma, and Anthony are around somewhere. Terry's probably off with that sod. Hermione hasn't shown up yet and so hasn't Neville and Parvati. I don't know where anyone else is or if they're intending to show up. And Ron. Well. Ron's here. You can see for yourself."

"Ronald. Poor dear. He really shouldn't have had all of that alcohol. It really ruins his lovely complexion."

"Don't bother, Luna. He's a bloody mess. He won't answer. Hermione didn't show up with him. I haven't been able to see her since this afternoon, actually. I think it had to do with Ron's drinking habits. I'm happy Lavender isn't here though. She might try to make a move on him." She laughed a little, it sounded awkward through her thinning sobs.

"What about Seamus?"

Seamus. Me. Here. I was alarmed, and my heart beat faster. I listened more carefully.

"I don't know where he is."

"He has a room here doesn't he?"

"Had."

"Oh, well did you give him a friendly knock?"

"He's not there."

"Is he going to come?"

"I don't know."

"That's a shame. He's going to miss a lot."

"He'll have his reasons."

"I hope so."

The abyss, the failure, the destruction and decay, lay festering beneath me as I stared down at those beasts in their hundreds upon hundreds of accusatory eyes, screaming, wild, breeding in the filth of my umbrage, poised to consume my soul, body, my eyes to become their own, ears which hear only the worst of hexes, lips that taste only the foulest of waters--my life will make or break in this very moment, time will not stand still for any man, any virtuous of souls or virulent of beings--me, as I am standing on this gossamer of rope bridges, quivering in my wake, my own human weight snapping flimsy fibers at its anchors, ready to hurl me into that abyss so that I must run with the utmost of urgency to my cadaverous of fates or tumble beneath it. May I flee? May I escape? Or may I tumble and fall, arch gracefully into that supertemporal umbra of guilt, maddening, and torpor?

I sat, physically quivering in stressful anxiety, feeling blood pump from my heart and throb into my ears, brooding over this so-powerful choice. Heat stirred beneath my hood and sayings and sentences and yearnings flooded my head and almost escaped out of the edges of my lips before I caught them and beat them mercifully back into my throat, but they came back again.

I began to remember, as I sat there torn between wishing to shout and scream to Ginny and Luna, "I'm here! I've been here! I've wanted to be here ever since you clasped my shoulders in genuine coterie and reassured me a million times and once more that it will be okay!" and wanting to evaporate, to disappear, to sneak back upstairs, or out into the vitriolic cold and freeze, stop, suffocate, fall into that demon abyss, and simply die.

I remembered. I remembered it. I remember the coin, and the alarm, the haste, and the faces. I remembered Harry, and the night, and the empty space, and the breaths we took, and breaths we pushed. I remember how it felt when he asked me for my wand, and when I gave it to him, missed, ran for it, and just reached it. I remember the blood, the bodies, the bone, and his eyes. His eyes, flaming green, that asked me so many things, begged and teared, and made me beg and tear. The gasp and the rattling exhale. The flickering and the darkness. The void and the forlorn hibernation.

I remembered it all.

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**A/N:** I hope it was enjoyable. I'm welcome to any sort of comments. Too wordy? Too much dialogue? Too little? I'd like to hear it all. 


	2. Chapter 2: Perquisites of a HalfBlood

**A/N**: Hello again, this is Chapter 2. It's a Work in Progress and I just need to know an audience for this kind of story exists. There's a very small romantic arc in the story, but I don't know whether or not I want to keep it going. Enjoy.

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Waking Seamus Finnigan  
by: Mauvais Sang

**Chapter 2**: _Perquisites of a Half-Blood_

"Wake up Seamus. It's nearly noon."

I felt a hand, moist and cool, smooth my forehead and muzzle the sides of my head and my greasy hair. It was Saturday, if she was still at home to wake me up so late in the burgeoning day, but it didn't matter to me: every day was a Saturday, or Friday evening, in the summer. Days and hours became irrelevantly interchangeable and what became worthwhile to keep track of would only depress and limit one's propensity for living out a summer for what its worth, for the spectre of September inched nearer and nearer until you faced it from a fraction of a millimeter away and felt drained, fatigued, almost excited (or dreading) at the prospect of old faces, but surely shudder at the thought of being in the chilled Potion's dungeon beneath the school.

I wasn't completely sure: whether I had created so soft a feeling in my romantic half-drunk grogginess or whether it was simply so gentle that the touch hadn't registered above my feeling threshold. Either way, I know I heard a voice sweetly urging me to awaken and informing me that noon had arrived sometime in my slumber, it set off a chain of events that would lead me to awaken in only a few minutes. I remained in my bed, that warm, all-encompassing safe place where retreat is the same as combustion, with a blanket, warmed by my body heat from the night just passed (and half a morning as well), over my shoulders, gently overcast over my fatigued body. Hazy over the eyes, they refused to cast awake and in a sinful, corpulent rebellion, I remained still, glued, a mossy stone in a fogged, gray sea cliff, salty waves crashing but still snoring, asleep, inanimate.

Some indiscriminate number of time passed again, where I don't remember recording any particularly important thoughts, before I was disturbed by another sound. It was not my caring mother, but an irritating rap, rap, rap, permeating shrilly through my dormant room. Rap, rap, rap, it wasn't the sound of a construction site, as I know for a fact that there weren't any such things in the residence, nor was it the forgivable clattering of metal pots and pans and searing of vegetables and peppered meats my mother would be captaining in the kitchen beyond my tanned wooden door. It was something, something else that I understood and was familiar with, but could not pin a name to, that curious sound ringing in my ear drums.

I kept my eyes shut but I was fully aware the sound drumming against my ears and bouncing off my walls, windows, and desks. A hollow, crisp rapping in three times or more in rapid succession resembled the sound of Hogwarts' Owlery in the early autumn when the birds would get restless and solicitous of one another, pecking at the wooden posts, flapping airy beats against their sides, and sometimes a burst of feathers, a dirty spectacle, would materialize out of what seemed like the thin air and you would realize one of the birds were spooked and, in skittish cantering, spread his wings and took flight only to be stopped abruptly by that brick wall we commonly call our faces.

Now I was simply committing the Christian sin of Sloth. I no longer had _sommeil_(1), but I lay there in spite, in resentment, in defiance of that sound, that infernal rap, rap, rapping and I shouted, "You don't have the power to steal me from my humanly pursuits, I can and will do what I wish, and what forces of nature want to defy me I so will defy them back and stand from the fray with its severed head in my arms." I spat at the sun and called down the Heavens. However foolish the deed was, the act of remaining asleep when one obviously cannot and body will not, it seemed to make sense to me in that moment as I wished to defy my physiological processes in order to yield the wishes of my selfish desires. Beneath my eyelids was a bright orange shade that told me my face was directly in the sun. I wanted to sleep, I was tired, and ill to the day, and didn't want to venture out, and be cold. This rap, rap, rapping won't let me and I was enraged, I was furious, I didn't like the fact that I could not control my body.

I gave up, submitted myself to the devil of noise, and awoke. Sitting upright, bare feet slapped on the wooden floor below, I rubbed off remnants of the hardened glue that cemented my eyelids together and yawned. Being a teenage boy, I was susceptible to that idle morning curse which plagued my thin fabric pajama bottoms. I sat in my bed and waited for the tent to subside, blood rushing out and back into the rest of my body creating a sort of adrenaline rush, before I got up to search for that noise which put me in this predicament to begin with. Looking around for the rapping, I turned to the window, to the door, to my closet, and to my shelf. I found nothing. The rapping had stopped. By now, I had forgotten that incurable rage I felt in the warmth of my bed and remembered the world around me. There were things to do, drinks to toast, people to meet.

I abandoned the formal sleep attire sometime in the beginning of hot, sweaty, summer and was clothed in as minimal clothing as was personably possible while still remaining in good manner and custom with the civilized world. The thin threads of my attenuated undershirt fractured with the weight of my increasingly ballooning muscle beneath it and in the back felt moist in the sweat of a summer's evening. My cool, permeable bottoms comfortably swished as I walked downstairs to breakfast, or lunch, or brunch, or whatever it was now called in this time of day.

The image which greeted me as I walked down the hall and towards the kitchen surprised me. My father sat at the table, puffing on a pipe, small circular glasses slid low on the bridge of his nose, a Daily Prophet spread-eagled in his hands:

**Hogwarts Contemplates Closure  
Headmistress McGonagall speaking with Scrimgeour**

I looked at the headline, and took note with myself to pick up the newspaper after my dad had finished. Not only was that headline a strange greeting but seeing my dad home at all at this time was surprising as well, even if it was a week-end. I pursued the matter as I pulled back a chair and flipped it around so that its back was closest to the table edge, its legs screeching against the ceramic tile, competing with the sound of mum crackling strips of bacon at the stove.

"Dad, why aren't you at the accountancy office?" I asked as I straddled the chair, arms folded at its top.

He puffed for a while, pretending not to hear me, before he answered. I always surmised it was more of a Muggle habit than a Fatherly habit, but I never really had much experience with fathers to compare it to.

"Paid vacation started Friday. Darling, you really should read this article here." He said more to my mother than to me.

"Hmm? I'll get around to it." Mum replied, still at the bacon.

"Are we going to do anything this year?" I asked, interceding in his conversation with mum. I was hoping to see a professional quidditch match or two this summer.

"Probably not," He said, not looking up from his paper. "I don't want to risk going out there. Darling, it says here that this Voldemort character is still terrorizing victims. Can't you catch him with your magic and wands, or something?"

An abrupt burst of laughter escaped my chest, and I quickly stifled myself.

"It takes much more than magic and wands to stop him," She said, returning to the table with a plate of bacon. "He's very powerful. It's like trying to catch a criminal which has all of the intelligent resources in the world to keep him from being seen, or tracked. The Ministry has to be two steps ahead. Seamus, don't sit like that. You can't eat that way."

I got up and turned my chair around with one arm so that it was in the proper seating arrangement, and sat down.

"The Ministry's doing a bum job of keeping him in check, then." He said, observantly noted.

"It's a hard job!" She answered, heatedly. My heart beat a little quicker as the sound shrilled in my ears and echoed as afterthoughts in the room.

"I'm sorry darling. It's just beyond my capacity to understand how these things work." He replied quietly, setting the newspaper aside and picking up his fork to dig into the potato.

We each ate in silence then, just me, my father, and my mother. The clang of metal forks against the ceramic plates was the din of dining, and we occasionally, one would reach for their glass and have a sip. It was like this for a long time before my mother broke the quiet.

"Do you have any plans today, Seamus?"

"I might fit in a game on the pitch with Dean. Ron too, maybe." I answered, dissecting my bacon.

"Where?" She said, trying hard to conceal her nosiness. I knew what she was getting at, though.

"I dunno," I stuffed a strip into my mouth. "Probably around his house."

"Not going to Diagon Alley again, are you?" I knew it would come to that.

"I'm not a child, mum!" I said. I was unaware of the added force I put to my words, because it silenced her for a while. I felt hot in the face, and almost ashamed.

"Of course you aren't. Look at you. Hair all shaggy and blonde like those boys in California, a beard that'll make you look homeless, and a few spots here and there. Of course you're not a child now." She said, scathingly.

I had enough. I dropped my fork onto the half-finished plate, and got up, left the kitchen.

"Seamus!" She shouted after me.

I ignored her, walking quickly, face and ears blushed red-hot, and retreated into my room, slamming the door to vocalize my frustration. All alone, I jumped onto my bed, now cool and refreshing against my skin, and forcefully sighed. I was angry with her for mentioning that one incident she caught me at Diagon Alley when I had told her I was with Dean. In fact, I wasn't with Dean. But I was with somebody else.

I pulled the pillow from behind my head and I put it over my face, screaming into it. I lay there for a while, the room muting out until I was left by the tone of my own ears ringing into themselves.

And then I heard it again. That sound: shattering my meditation, my mulling and brooding, my self-destruction and implosion. I heard that infernal rap, rap, rapping, that pestered me to awaken and play out the drama with my mother and father just two minutes before. I got up, more curious than angry, and looked around to follow the sound. Rap, rap, rap. Where were you? What were you doing here?

And then I found it. It was perched at my closed window, a beautiful, snowy owl sat patiently a ledge, pecking earnestly at the barrier that kept it from delivering its message. I quickly moved toward the window, excitement beating in my chest, and nearly stumbled over a stray book in getting it opened. The bird crawled in, waddling strangely on its two narrow feet unused to solid ground, and dropped an envelope onto my desk.

My name was on the envelope. And it was addressed from him, Harry. Harry Potter.

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(1)_Means "sleepy" in French_

**A/N**: Oh, I hope people are reading this at all.


	3. Chapter 3: Aligheiri & Strixology

**A/N**: It's almost as if this story doesn't exist. Maybe I should put "Slash" in the summary. Enjoy!

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Waking Seamus Finnigan  
By: Mauvais Sang

**Chapter 3**: _Aligheiri & Strixology_

Keep your windows closed. They open to let the chill inside and with it, a sneeze, a cold, and general ill-being.

When I find that heavy rock pulling and gnawing at the depths of my subconscious so ostentatiously dubious that it manages to climb to the surface of my conscious being and bubble angrily just beneath it, I create traps for myself and set them up carefully in Virgil's Forest so that the beast is caught, strangled, apprehended, and hurled back into those Circles of Hell that it spewed forth. And then I am on my way again. As a boy of sixteen, I encounter more beasts in a single time frame than an entire life without it and, not dissimilar to magma that pools just beneath a spring of water boiling and rendering it a danger, I become altogether a more moody and volatile individual.

Take the example of that argument with my mother. Retrospect gives me dissecting eyes that being in the present situation did not.

My mother, she's not a beast, but she simply helped to release one of them. A beast is a shame, an experience, a guilt and a desire that feeds on the soul and commits it to atrophy. So the soul succumbs to starvation, so does the body, and, in effect, the life. A beast gnaws at the tendons and sucks at the marrow of existence, if left out too long or if virulent enough will obviously cause heavy damage and mental trauma, so beasts are wished to be apprehended and trapped in as quick a way as possible. The apprehension of a beast is a subject within itself. Needless to say, the catching of a beast is a long and enduring project.

Earlier in the summer, approximately three weeks and two or three days after the lazy June subsided to an emblazoned July, I took an amicable trip to Diagon Alley. However, it must be said, that this was shortly (However long "short" is, anyway. I considered it rather long, but I seemed to have a rather sluggish reference of time according to my mother) after the events of Hogwarts and the murder of Dumbledore. She forbade me to go to Diagon Alley. But I had to go there. I had to go see him. She never forbade me to Dean's house. So I told her I'd be there. But it was a lie. It was a beast impregnated in the womb of my psyche, ready to rip forth and scream, and shriek, steaming hot like a ripped open dumpling.

She found me there. But it is not within the finding which gives the final push to the beast, but rather the situation, the action, and the lie. Why she herself was there was something I hadn't investigated, but the point was she was there, and she saw, and she was furious. She never said a word. Didn't say a thing to my father, and I suspect she never said a thing to herself. I shackled that beast and threw it into the depths of my being but that afternoon, in a grand total sum of eight whole words, she released the monster, and it ran, eager and hungry, athirst and agog. Any beast, when chained and cage, will grow obscene in his captivity, and leave less human and more demonous than he was before.

So I reprimanded her, by becoming my own little monster.

Therein lays the shame that feeds the beast. Shame. Shame us. Seamus. Our names seem to foretell the story of our lives, doesn't it. Was it wrong to burst at her? What compelled her to unshackle that shame and run it rampant in our home? Why do I still feel the beast gnawing at my Achilles' tendon?

Or, maybe, I've had it all wrong the entire time. It's only something I can now contemplate and improve upon for later, instead of erasing and editing my life as experienced before and, in that sort of way, find and shackle more beasts.

So brings me closer to the present time, away from analysis and vivisection, where there I stood, holding an enveloped addressed to "Finnigan" and addressed from "Potter", staring at the familiar hand writing, the thin scribbled lettering it was, common, standard-issued parchment paper soft like crinkled bills. I was guilty. I didn't want to open it. I didn't want to look at it.

But I did, anyway.

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**A/N**: Oooo what's gonna happen? fdsa;f.fdsa 


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